Night.
I had no idea where I was. But far away, I thought I could hear the ocean crashing. I saw the shadowy contours of a sterile, boxy room, and tried to move my head to speak.
'Wheeerree…,' I slurred, unable to form even a single word.
Then Alexa suddenly appeared, hovering above me.
'Shhh,' she said, putting her finger to my lips.
'Wheerrrree I ammsssshhh.' Gibberish.
'Don't try to talk.'
I looked up at her. I felt frightened and alone. Then another figure appeared behind her. Round, moon-faced, cherubic. I knew him from someplace. I couldn't remember where.
'Lay still,' he told me firmly.
As I felt myself slipping away, I almost had his name. Tony something.
Chapter 33
The next thing I remembered, I was looking at a ceiling, studying the cracks in the white paint, again hearing the distant roar of the ocean. Or was it just the air conditioner? Light streamed through the window. I heard whispering, tried to look, hut couldn't move.
'Aye… Aye…,' I croaked. Chooch and Alexa leaned over me.
'Dad,' Chooch said, his face drawn into a frown.
'Aye… Aye…' I couldn't talk.
'Get the doctor,' Alexa said. Chooch disappeared.
'You were shot two times. Almost drowned. A farm truck saw you go off the road. They came back and pulled you out.'
As she spoke I vaguely remembered some of it. Secada rolling the SUV. Getting shot. Scooping her up in my arms as I ran.
Then a doctor was leaning over me.
'Mr. Scully?'
'Huh?'
'Can you hear me?' He reached out and touched my right hand. 'Can you feel this?' he asked.
'Huh?'
'If you feel it, nod.' I nodded. 'And this?' He reached across to my left side, but I felt nothing over there. My left side seemed numb.
I closed my eyes and in a few seconds I was gone again.
When I next came to, it was dark. I could still hear the distant crash of the surf. I looked in the direction of the sound. The windows were arched, Spanish style. I had no idea where I was. I made a noise, then heard a chair scrape. In a moment, Alexa hovered over me again.
'Shane, I'm here,' she said softly.
'Where?' I finally managed.
'Casa Dorinda.'
No idea where that was.
She pulled her chair close and sat beside the bed, reached out, and held my right hand.
'I'm here. I'm with you, babe,' she whispered. 'Don't try to talk. Conserve your energy.'
'Se-ca-da?' I finally managed.
'We'll talk about it in the morning. Go back to sleep.' I closed my eyes and tried to remember what had happened. As I slipped away, disturbing images replayed in my head.
In and out, in and out. A knife flashed relentlessly. Underhanded and fast, prison style.
Chapter 34
Over the next two days, I was reintroduced to my life one little piece at a time.
Alexa was there, and sometimes Chooch and Delfina. A couple of times I woke up for a few seconds and saw the same old, white-haired, fatherly looking gentleman. What I'd thought was curiosity now looked more like disapproval. Somewhere around his second or third visit, I placed him. He was the retired head of the LAPD Internal Affairs Division who had twice tried to get me thrown off the job. I still couldn't remember his name. What the hell is that guy doing here? I wondered.
Once or twice, when I was between heavy doses of medication, my mind would actually start working again and through a hazy landscape of missing facts, I would remember the same string of events: The BlackBerry. Switching it with a young, arrogant man inside a restaurant. The shanking in the prison cafeteria. A necklace of ugly mistakes.
Sometimes during my lucid moments, Alexa would be there and translate my slurred questions, answering them for me. She told me Casa Dorinda was a private hospital up the coast in Santa Barbara.
I was slowly coming out of the fog, feeling stupid and exposed, loaded up on painkillers and sedatives. As my memory of the last two weeks slowly returned, it brought with it deep self-anger.
When I slept, my dreams were tortured accusations. Occasionally, Dr. Lusk was in the mix, Buddha-like and unemotional. '/ can't help you if you won't share your feelings.'
Then one night I woke up at midnight, coming out of the drug-induced confusion like a swimmer from a muddy lake. I suddenly felt a new sense of clarity and control. Chooch was sitting beside the bed.
'Hi,' I said, softly.
He leaned over. 'Don't talk, Dad.' He held my hand tighter. 'Dad,' he whispered softly. 'You and Mom are all I have. You've got to get through this. You've got to do it for me. Okay?'
I loved him so much I suddenly had tears in my eyes.
'Try,' I said, forcing the word out.
The next morning I was more or less back. Chooch and Delfina had returned to the hotel to get some sleep. People were tiptoeing in and out of my hospital room.
I looked over and saw Alexa reading a brown file folder in the corner. When we spoke, we settled for small talk and some personal housekeeping. How I got here, how close a call it had been. Apparently, I had actually drowned in that mountain stream. I'd flatlined in the ambulance, been revived by the EMTs on the way to the Corcoran State Prison Hospital, which was the closest medical facility. Our police badges had made it possible for us to be taken there. But I'd had a mild heart attack and then a mini-stroke two hours later. When I asked about Secada, Alexa told me she was in critical care. Her prognosis was guarded. Something in the way she spoke these words told me that was all I was going to get. Whether she was protecting me or what was left of us, I couldn't tell.
Over the next twenty-four hours I discovered the rest of it, picking up pieces, and fitting them carefully back into a broken mosaic of facts that, once formed, made a weird, unhappy picture. Alexa had cut through a mile of red tape to have Secada and me transferred here from the prison hospital at Corcoran. She knew that inmates at the prison changed the bedpans and hospital drips. As Secada had correctly surmised, if left there long enough, somebody would eventually hit the right number and we'd go End of Watch.
'How did you find this place?' I asked her.
'Captain Terra vicious,' she said.
The silver-haired, disdaining ex-head of Internal Affairs. His name was Victor Terravicious, and he'd been known far and wide inside the department as Vic Vicious, which tells you something about him right there. He ran I. A. back when Alexa was the star advocate in the division. Vic was her first department rabbi and I always thought he had the hots for her.
